Construction tough to navigate

Zenani Doyle sat at the front of her West African history class, hoping that the cute boy next to her would notice her.

She had forgotten a textbook in her backpack and needed help getting it out.

“Sometimes I need things from my backpack or I drop something from the wheelchair, and I’m a friendly person so I just ask a student next to me,” the fourth-year history student said. “If it happens to be a cute guy, well then all the better for me.”

Doyle has been in a wheelchair since she was 7 years old and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth.

The disease makes it difficult to move because of the tightening of the body’s muscles and decreased movement of the joints, Doyle said.

Because of the disease, she must remain in a wheelchair, but Doyle adapted and decided to transfer to UCLA a year ago, although it is a difficult school to navigate.

Every building is wheelchair accessible, and every classroom has entrances and seating for students with disabilities, but finding those routes can be a challenge, Doyle said.

“Some of the signage for wheelchair access is hard to see. The signs are the same color brown as the surroundings,” she said. “It’s a wheelchair accessibility scavenger hunt.”

For Angelique Nguyen-Le, a second-year undeclared student, the key to navigating the campus in a wheelchair is to find the right pathways to class and stick with the same route.

Nguyen-Le has been in a wheelchair since the beginning of high school and uses it for long distances, although with her form of spinal muscular atrophy, she can use an assisted walker at home.

Both students said the ongoing construction next to De Neve and Sproul is complicating their lives.

For Doyle, it means waking up about 10 minutes earlier and navigating around the tennis courts before going to her classes through Bruin Walk.

Furthermore, the construction next to Pauley Pavilion, which forces all of the students onto a narrow pathway, makes it difficult to navigate particularly when there are a lot of students going to class, Doyle said.

This has caused Doyle to leave her room 45 minutes to an hour before her classes start to ensure she will get to them on time, she said.

The extra detour adds a little more than five extra minutes to Nguyen-Le’s morning commute to class, she said.

“I sometimes joke with my friends that I want to just ride down the Covel steps, and by the time I get out of the hospital, Sproul Circle will be open again,” she said.

Although the construction causes some problems, there is a van service available for students with disabilities that stops on the Hill about once an hour, said Ed McCloskey, assistant director of the Office for Students with Disabilities.

Currently, there are approximately 10 wheelchair-users who live on the Hill, and fewer than five visually impaired students, McCloskey said.

The students with disabilities who use wheelchairs most often choose to live in Sunset Village or De Neve because many ground-floor rooms are available, he said.

“Wheelchair-users can live anywhere they want. Our preference for them is to live on a bottom floor for purposes of easier evacuation, but if you want to live at the top floor of Hedrick and have a view of the world, then you’re welcome to,” McCloskey said.

Alongside the van service, there are a variety of services available through the Office for Students with Disabilities to help the students in class, he said.

Raul Carranza, a third-year psychology student who was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at the age of 2 and who has been in a wheelchair since he was 4, uses some of the services in his classes.

The disease does not allow the muscle cells to make enough energy, thus causing Carranza to not be able to move his arms and legs.

Besides using the van service to get to class every day, his books are scanned by the Office for Students with Disabilities and packaged on disks. As a writer, Carranza said he also uses a touch keyboard to type up regular blog posts as well as any class essays.

For Carranza and Doyle though, the biggest navigational difficulty is attempting to work around students who are texting on cell phones.

“The texters are my new least favorite people,” Doyle said. “The people get so engrossed in the texting that sometimes they almost fall on me.”